The Other Side of the Story - Money Laundering

In order to "whitewash" the questionable behavior of others, we might only need to realize that we ourselves are engaged in ...

Money Laundering

I was in a yeshiva in Lakewood, New Jersey. The coming Shabbos was an "off-Shabbos," free for the students to make their own plans, and I planned to go home to Brooklyn. The bus I needed to take cost eight dollars at that time, and I had the money in my jacket pocket.

At yeshiva the next morning a friend of mine took the money out of my pocket, and started playing around with it. When he finally gave it back to me there was only three dollars. I knew that I had put eight dollars there, so I demanded that he give me the other five dollars, which he did.

The next week, he kept on asking me to give him back the five dollars. He claimed that he only took three from my pocket, and that he gave me the other five as a loan as a favor since I needed it for the bus.

The next time I did laundry, I found five dollars among the clean clothes. Then I realized what had happened: I thought I had put all eight dollars in my jacket pocket, but really I had left five dollars in my shirt pocket, and it went through the wash. I apologized to my friend, and I learned my lesson to judge other people favorably.